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>The combined knowledge of humanity is basically freely available to anyone with the skill to use it. It's fascinating how differently people react to the know
by hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
>The combined knowledge of humanity is basically freely available to anyone with the skill to use it.
It's fascinating how differently people react to the knowledge of this phenomenon. When I was a kid, basically as soon as I realized this was the case I started arguing with my parents that we had to have an Internet-connected computer in the house now. As soon as we got one I basically started reading Wikipedia every non-school hour of every day for 2 years straight.
I doubt I remember more than 0.1% of everything I actually read from that period of my life, but it felt formative and healing in a way I just never expected to be the case. I have also never met anyone else who did something like this and it makes me sad!
- bombcar 3y agoI read both the complete set of the Book of Knowledge and whatever version of Britannica my parents had, cover to cover. Then again I also printed the DooM FAQ out.
- foobarian 3y agoCan you please think back very hard and try to remember if it's something that you ate or drank that made you like this that I can feed to my kids :-D
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoCoffee! Caution: YMMV.
- nindalf 3y agoI read Wikipedia a lot too as a kid. I think it was because it loaded quicker than other websites while not using much of the data cap.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoI binged on Wikipedia too. In a way, it was the OG "infinite content website" way before scoundrels perfected this and made it into a business model (notifications, infinite scroll, etc.). I would search for something I needed or was curious about, read the article, find some links expanding on adjacent topics, start reading those, and suddenly it's 2-3h hours later, I have 20+ Wikipedia tabs open, I am reading something entirely unrelated to the original topic, and I have no idea how I got there. Rinse repeat over my high school and early university years.
- narag 3y agoI have also never met anyone else who did something like this and it makes me sad! Decades before, I did the same with Enciclopedia Larousse, an Atlas, the Historia Universal Aguilar, the Diccionario ideológico by Casares and some others. Those were made of paper, you know :) I wasn't impressed with Wikipedia. But I enjoy IMDb very much. And many illegal/semilegal stuff online.